31 Days of Creepy Kids- Day 15... it's a Creep-Off!

To celebrate the half way point in out 31 Days of Creepy Kids, we're having us a good old fashioned Creep-Off! Think of it as a cage match between two creepy kids, only no one really wins, especially not us.

Nicoletta Elmi vs. Giovanni Frezza
It was impossible to be a fan of Italian Horror movies of the 70's and 80's without seeing these little whelps all over the place. (For the record they're not both girls; the blonde kid is a boy, who just happens to be pretty enough to be a girl. Oddly enough, that came into play in one of his movies...) Italian Horror, and most notably Giallo flicks, were famous for having stylized aspects about them, and the presence of unsettling children was definitely one of the most effective. Black gloves were good too. And crazy colors. The music...

The ginger is Nicoletta Elmi; a cute kid with a creepy demeanor, she was all over the Giallo world in the 70's. If you haven't seen the Argento classic Deep Red (1975) or the Lamberto Bava gem Demons (1985), then you really need to question yourself as a horror fan. You're also missing 2 of Nicoletta's best roles.

Shoulda killed her when you had your chance, dummy.
Whether being murdered, possessed by ghosts and demons, or just flat out stabbing someone to death, Nicoletta Elmi had an eerie presence about her. She even made drinking Tang look creepy. Even in movies where she died horribly, we're convinced that she was the killer, and managed to kill herself off just to mess with our minds. It's too bad she stopped acting in the 80's (Demons was her last film) to become a doctor. It's got to be unnerving to be sitting in an exam room, and have the chick from Demons come in and poke you with needles. I'm just sayin'.

Even though she grew up to be a hottie, we could never trust her. Not ever!

The blonde kid, the one pretty enough to be a girl, is Giovanni Frezza; the little tyke made his mark on Italian Horror in the 80's, and his last movie was Demons too... coincidence? I don't know. Methinks there's something odd about 2 of the creepiest and most iconic kids in Italian Cinema history both ending their careers in a movie about Demons....

Looks like they're mad at Dad...
Anywho, Lil' Gio (that was his street name) was the go-to kid in Fulci and Bava (Lamberto) films in the 80's. Like Nicoletta Elmi, he had a way of just creeping people out by being in the room... and staring at them... and smiling all evil like... or sitting in a field with a partially dismembered doll... or dressing like a girl... or killing... or letting scorpions run around in his hair...

Seriously, what in the hell is he doing with that doll?!?


The Master Says- There's a reason that the likes of Bava (both of them), Fulci, and Argento made use of these kids in their films, over and over again; they were damned good at creeping audiences out. Nicoletta and Giovanni came, creeped and went, both moving on to normal jobs that didn't involve children and murder.

So who wins the Creep-Out? Not to sound indecisive, but it's a tie. You try pick which one you'd rather have in an abandoned old mansion with you... you can't can you? I'd honestly rather be trapped in a car by Cujo, than have to deal with either of these little bastards one on one.